Office of Sen. Moran
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) Wednesday questioned witnesses from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on changes they are making to improve aviation safety. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee held the hearing to examine both the progress and delays within the FAA to make necessary safety changes in accordance with the FAA Reauthorization Act, which Senator Moran helped to draft and pass last Congress.
Sen. Moran questioned witnesses about FAA’s failure to recognize a series of near misses in the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) airspace leading up to the January 29 midair collision involving American Airlines flight 5342originating from Wichita and a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter.
“The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation after the tragic collision at DCA highlighted 15,214 events from October 21 to December 24 of commercial planes and helicopters that were separated by less than one nautical mile,” said Moran.
“That information that NTSB provided came from FAA computer records. Those numbers and other statistics demonstrate to me a continuing problem and circumstance in which there is close proximity between aircraft at DCA. If this information is in the FAA’s computer records, does the FAA monitor these records to recognize trends so that actions can be taken to reduce the risks?”
Following Sen. Moran’s questioning, Mr. Franklin McIntosh, Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the Air Traffic Organization at FAA, acknowledged that there were mitigation failures in their systems leading up to the Jan. 29th accident and agreed with Sen. Moran’s assertion that the data “is sufficiently alarming that it should have raised more awareness and action than it did.”
Watch Sen. Moran's questioning below.